The Underground Railroad eBook

He believed in woman as only a thoroughly good man
can, and from early youth, he had been impressed with
her peculiar fitness for the practice of medicine.
The experience of a physician confirmed him in his
sentiments, and it became one of his most earnest aspirations
to open to her all the avenues to the study of medicine.
In the year 1840, he gave regular instruction to a
class of ladies, and it was through one of these pupils,
that the first female graduate in America was interested
in the study of medicine. In 1846 he communicated
to a few liberal-minded professional men, a plan for
the establishment of a college of the highest grade
for the medical education of women. This long-cherished
plan, hallowed to him by the approbation of a beloved
wife, was well received. Others, with indomitable
zeal, took up the work, and finally, after a succession
of disappointments and discouragements from causes
within and without, the Woman’s College, on
North College avenue, Philadelphia, starting from the
germ of his thought, entered on the career of prosperity
it is so well entitled to receive. Though never
at any time connected with the college, he regarded
its success with the most affectionate interest, considering
its proposition as one of the most important results
of his life.

Happy in having lived to see Slavery abolished, and
believing in the speedy elevation of woman to her
true dignity as joint sovereign with man, and in the
mitigation of the evils of war, intemperance, poverty,
and crime, which might be expected to follow such a
result, he rested from his labors, and died in peace.

THOMAS SHIPLEY.[A]

Thomas Shipley, one of the foremost in the early generation
of philanthropists who devoted their lives to the
extinction of human slavery, was born in Philadelphia
on the second of Fourth month, 1787. He was the
youngest of five children of William and Margaret Shipley,
his father having emigrated from Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire,
England, about the year 1750. From a very early
period in the history of the Society of Friends his
ancestors had been members of that body, and he inherited
from them the strong sense of personal independence,
and the love of toleration and respect for the rights
of others which have ever characterized that body
of people.

Soon after his birth, his mother died, and he was
thus early deprived of the fostering care of a pious
and devoted parent, whose counsels are so important
in forming the youthful mind, and in giving a direction
to future life.